“It has been a hard year. We are living through a global pandemic unlike any since 1918, an economic collapse unlike any since 1933, civil unrest unlike any since 1968, and the greatest unexpected loss of life since 9/11. The entire country is living, collectively, through four events that, each in isolation, would suffice to make the year darkly memorable. That the four events are being experienced together represents nothing short of a remarkable collective traumatic experience, one with immediate, short-term, and long-term consequences for millions of Americans.
And yet it’s important to remember. There was a 1919. A 1934. A 1969. A 2002. There will be sun after the dark of 2020.”
Cutting ties with the World Health Organization, Trump endangers global public health | STAT News
“President Trump’s announcement on Friday that the United States will cut ties with the World Health Organization was, he said, aimed at punishing China, which he claimed influenced the WHO to “mislead the world” about the Covid-19 pandemic. Cutting ties with the WHO is exactly the wrong move, at the wrong time. It adds fuel to the public health fire we have been collectively dealing with over the past several months.
The president’s announcement came just a few days after the U.S. had passed the 100,000 mark in Covid-19 deaths. The road to this grim milestone was paved with failures at the federal level to adequately prepare for such a crisis by underfunding the public health organizations tasked with pandemic response followed by the administration’s slipshod efforts to quickly deal with the outbreak when it reached the U.S.”
How conspiracies theories hurt vaccination numbers | Oxford University Press Blog
“Near the end of 2018, 1data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that a small, but growing, number of children in the United States were not getting recommended vaccinations. One in 77 infants born in 2017 did not receive any vaccination. That’s more than four times as many unvaccinated children as the country had at the turn of the century. Some of this may be due to lack of access to vaccines; populations without insurance and those living in rural areas have greater rates of nonvaccination. But part of it is also likely due to the rise of conspiracy theories and the willful dismissal of scientific evidence when it comes to vaccines.
Vaccinations have always provoked anxiety. But the data on vaccines that are in widespread use are now clear: vaccines are safe and save lives. Nonetheless, conspiracism insists that we don’t know all the facts, that things about vaccines are not as they seem. Conspiracism fuels the anti-vaccine movement, nudging people to accept anecdotes (e.g., “I heard about one child who got a measles vaccine and developed autism”) over statistics.”
The coronavirus pandemic will turn into a poverty pandemic unless we act now | The Washington Post
“Discussions about the covid-19 pandemic’s effects tend to focus either on public health or the economy, as if they were two separate matters. But they are linked, and not just by data about the disease’s disproportionate impact on poor and minority populations. The worldwide economic devastation from lockdown policies is sending millions into poverty — increasing their exposure to potential covid-19 infection as well as to the deadly threat that comes simply from being poor.
As challenging — and vitally important — as fighting the pandemic has been, the long-term health costs of an economic depression could ultimately far eclipse what covid-19 has wrought.”
Americans Want Health. Will Leaders Listen? | Thrive Global
Authored by Sandro Galea and Karestan Koenen.
On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. In the days that followed, schools across the country closed, businesses declared non-essential shut their doors, and Americans were told to stay at home. American citizens met the challenge, altering their entire way of life within days and continuing to uphold these changes 10 weeks and counting. Collectively, citizens changed their behavior for the good of the nation’s health. In remarkably short order, Americans were asked to change their behavior, and we did so, quickly and effectively flattening the curve.
Anyone who has made a New Year resolution knows that changing one’s behavior to improve one’s health is difficult at best. Public health slogans focused on individual behavior change such as “eat less, move more” have not bent the curve for obesity, heart disease, or diabetes. The dramatic declines in motor vehicle-related mortality over the past several decades have not been attributed to better driving behavior, but to seatbelt use, airbags, shatterproof glass, and laws monitoring driving while under the influence of alcohol. In other words, when we have improved health, it has seldom been because we chose to behave differently. This moment is, therefore, particularly important because so many in the past months have changed their behaviors.
Preventing the next pandemic through investment in academic public health | The Hill
Authored by Laura Magaña and Sandro Galea.
“The novel coronavirus pandemic is a public health emergency not seen in our lifetimes. And while we fully endorse calls to redouble our nation’s investment in public health infrastructure, investments in academic public health are just as crucial to ending this crisis and ensuring that we are better prepared for the next one.
Public health schools and programs, which train the workers dedicated to advancing the health of our communities and serve as incubators for innovative public health efforts, have stepped up in meaningful and visible ways during this difficult moment. Epidemiologists, immunologists, virologists and social scientists from public health schools and programs are building our knowledge base about COVID-19, showing time and time again that public health research is more important than ever.”
Uncomfortable conversations about COVID-19 | The Hill
“The relationship between health and income is remarkably clear. Those who are fortunate enough to have higher incomes live longer, healthier lives. The richest among us have life expectancies of more than a dozen years beyond the poorest. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare our class divides and points to the imperative of prioritizing health equity as we get past these terrible weeks and months.
As we describe in “Pained: Uncomfortable Conversations About The Public’s Health,” poverty is a public health problem. The COVID-19 crisis only clarifies the mechanisms by which a new health threat makes the poorest among us the most vulnerable.
The coronavirus highlights three questions: Who gets exposed? Who needs critical care? Who receives care?”
Anxiety as a Public Health Issue | Harvard Business Review
As the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds, many of us are feeling the strain on our mental health. Some people feel anxiety about getting laid off; others have to continue to work at grocery stores and delivery companies, or perform other essential services, sometimes without the protections they need to stay safe. Families are trying to balance caregiving with remote work. We all worry about someone we love getting sick or about getting sick ourselves. There’s also the sudden instability of it all, as the pandemic upends global systems that many took for granted. Meanwhile, the social distancing measures we are taking to slow the spread of the disease have meant weeks of confinement, which brings its own anxieties.
In our concern for the physical risks of this pandemic, it is easy to overlook the mental health burden many of us feel. We may even be inclined to minimize our anxiety, thinking that, compared with what Covid-19 can do to our bodies, its effect on our minds is a lesser concern.